With the current state of identity theft, uncontrolled data collection and targeted marketing, there is a need for a user to protect their primary identity and to compartmentalize their online activity. For example, the user might prefer to use their primary identity for general browsing or reading online newspapers, use a different identity for accessing and commenting on social media, another for purchasing from e-commerce applications, and still another identity for selling their furniture.
One method to achieve this compartmentalization is to allow a user to create multiple synthetic identities and then use them for different purposes. Each synthetic identity would have its own identity attributes which may include name, address, phone number, email, social media attributes, credit and more. Each synthetic identity should be used for a limited and specific purpose, so that tracking of that identity would not form a complete picture of the user's activity. The synthetic identities act as a personal privacy proxy, preventing Internet services access to the user's primary identity.
Some of the key differences between the use of a primary identity and synthetic identities are requirements of separate identity attributes, communications capabilities and strong compartmentalization. It is not uncommon for a user to have multiple email addresses (e.g., Gmail® accounts so that they can compartmentalize their email use). This might be to separate their online shopping (spam) email from other personal email. However, outside of a different email address the user has the same identity attributes on each account and it is less likely that the user will need multiple separate address books, separate phone numbers for voice and messaging, separate accounts for social media and so on.
When using synthetic identities the concept of unique identity attributes and compartmentalized communication is important. Each synthetic identity may require an individual email address, phone number for voice calls and messaging, address book, social media accounts, credit, and delivery address, so that very strong compartmentalization is achievable. With these requirements comes the complexity of how the user can act with their synthetic identities without inadvertently impacting the privacy of their own primary identity.
For example, a user accesses a web site using a synthetic identity, where that synthetic identity possesses identity attributes different than the user's primary identity. Inadvertently, the user may enter their primary identity name into the site, such as signing off a comment on a news article, or the name details on a registration page.
A new solution is required where the user can be provided assistance when operating as a synthetic identity. The solution should aid the user in communicating as their synthetic identity and in their choice of synthetic identity. The solution should facilitate a clear identification of the synthetic identity in use and notify a user if the activities of their synthetic identity are risking the privacy of their primary identity.
One solution is to allow the user to support their different synthetic identities using multiple mobile phones, email services, and browsers, and have a distributed model of monitoring agents on the different technologies. Consider the case where the user has two synthetic identities each with their own mobile phone, email account, browser, and social media account. In this scenario, software agents have access to each service. For example, a Safari® agent is able to monitor (and control) a synthetic identity's web browsing, protecting the user from undermining the privacy of their primary identity. This is a very complex implementation from the point of view of the user as they are required to juggle multiple mobile phones, email services, social media accounts, and different browsers. The burden is on the user to keep their primary identity and synthetic identities separate. Additionally, the implementation is very complex from a technical point of view in that there is a requirement to build agents for the various technologies and services (with the maintenance problem of keeping these agents current). There is also a requirement to allow these agents to communicate through some coordinating service. For example, it would be advantageous to have a view across the address books to identify the same contacts in multiple synthetic identity address books that might suggest a loss of compartmentalization.
Therefore a new kind of solution is required that provides both a convenient approach for the user to act fully as a synthetic identity and a robust approach to assist the user to avoid synthetic identity activities that reduces the privacy of their primary identity.